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Before Windrush: West Indians in Britain
Revelatory account of Caribbean immigration to Britain in the centuries before the Windrush generation’s arrival
PRE-RAPHAELITE MODEL: Porrtait of Fanny Eaton by Walter Fryer Stocks

IN RESPONSE to a call from the British government for workers to fill the gaps in Britain’s post-war labour shortage, the Empire Windrush brought the first large group of Caribbean people to Britain in 1948.

By 1973, nearly half a million had settled here. Working in the NHS, manufacturing and construction, transport and the postal service, each one was automatically a British subject and free to live and work in this country permanently.

The history of the Windrush generation is well-known, as is the ongoing scandal of the despicable treatment many have received in recent years in having their citizens’ rights denied.

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